Monday, June 22, 2015

Another good week, we have now just eight months left in this calling. It is going quickly and will be here before we know it. With the mission split July 1 and transfers this week, there will be a lot of new things to get used to. It will be interesting to see where the missionaries are assigned this week and there are quite a few new missionaries reporting.
We have had some good visits this week, Maybe because we are entering the "older" time in life, we enjoy visiting with people who usually don't have a lot of contact with people outside of their family. Some of them are rather lonely, especially when a spouse has died and family are not living close.
We had a send off meeting with Pres. and Sis Heirs on Wednesday morning. They and the counselors and wives gave their talks and testimonies. It was a special occasion for all of us. We will miss their leadership and are looking forward to meeting our new mission president. Prior to the general meeting, we had a senior couple training that was very enjoyable, Pres. and Sis Heirs came in and talked to us for a short time.
On Wednesday we had three generations of one family in the stake center family history center. There were two parents, their daughter, and a granddaughter. They were all doing a different phase of family history and we were quite busy for a couple of hours trying to answer questions and help them find information.
One sister we finally were able to meet with has had some health problems, including an operation. She doesn't get out very much and really appreciated our visit. Another Sister is over ninety and lost her husband several years ago. She lives in her home with a son who takes care of her. She is a neat lady. Another sister in the same ward has had some health challenges as well as the deaths of several family members, including her husband over the past few years. We felt very good about our visit. She is very much into family history and that brings her some opportunity to keep busy and feel somewhat connected to her family and gives her good feelings.
Friday we ended up taking the sisters to Farr West for an exchange. We had some business at the mission office so we stopped there for the last time. We found out from the staff there where our new mission office will be in Logan. That will be exciting to not have to go to Ogden so often. However, the southern boundary of the Logan Mission will go to 17th Street in Ogden.
When we returned to Hyrum, we attended a barbecue for the single adults in our Stake. They had a nice attendance. Ruth and I went with committee members to make invitations so it was fun to see those people and others at the event. They had a nice meal and a fair turnout.
Saturday was a family day. We had Kaylene, Ron, TeTe and Hallie come to the house for barbecued hamburgers for lunch time. Hallie and TeTe have four of Te Te's sister's children staying with them so it was a fun time. We purchased a canopy toward the end of last summer so we were able to get some use out of that during this time outside. It was a little tricky to get into place, but with some help of a neighbor girl, we got it figured out.
We then went to Salt Lake for a wedding reception. My sister Lavon's granddaughter was married earlier in the day in the Manti Temple. The reception was nice and Lavon, Nick, Elizabeth and I were able to attend. Since we didn't stay too late, we took the opportunity to stop by and see Ruth's sister Catherine and talk with her and her husband about their recently completed mission; they served the same kind of mission we are serving.
Sunday was a day of meetings and phone calls. We attended the fourteenth ward for a returning missionary report and then we attended all of the meetings in our ward. We also had a young man who recently returned from his mission in Pennsylvania. Both meetings included some nice tributes to Fathers.
In the course of the day, I found out that a neighbor was quite ill and we decided to go make a visit. He is the father of a former neighbor of ours. He had a stroke about ten years ago which left his left side paralyzed. During warm weather, he would use his walker for support and take a walk around the neighborhood. We hadn't seen him for a while so we wondered about him. We had a good visit, at first he said he was dealing with some things but was keeping it to himself. As we visited with us he told us he had been diagnosed with stage four cancer in his right hip and was in hospice care. He has a pretty negative attitude about some things but he thanked us for our visit and for being his friend.